Govigama - Rise of A Govi Caste Elite in The Late 19th Century

Rise of A Govi Caste Elite in The Late 19th Century

By the 19th century, large numbers of traditional chiefs had been killed in successive battles with Portuguese, Dutch and British over 400 years of colonialism and the status of the remaining traditional chiefs had been reduced to that of Colonial servants. The Dutch in the 18th century and the British in the 19th century had actively sought ways to curb the power and influence of the native chiefs and headmen.

The late British period saw the proliferation of native headmen and a Mudaliyar class resembling English country squires, complete with large land grants by the British, and British granted native titles. (Mudaliyar is a South Indian and Tamil name for ‘first’ and a person endowed with wealth.) The Mudaliya class was created by the Portuguese colonials in the 17th century by enlisting natives of many castes form the coastal areas they controlled.

The British Governor Gordon (1883–1890) and his predecessors effectively used divide and rule policies and created caste animosity among the native elite and finally confined all high Native appointments only to the Govigama caste in 1897. The British Government Agent Layard was advocating this as an effective policy for easy governance. Mahamudliar Louis De Saram’s family of Dutch and Malay ancestry had Sinhalised and Govigamised itself during the Dutch period and had a strong network of relatives as Mudaliyars by the late 19th century. As Kumari Jayawardena notes, the Mudaliyars, were merely "Low-country" Goyigama families who rose to prominence under colonial rule, by loyal service to colonial masters. Among them were the De Saram family that had married lower class Burghers, and later through other marriage alliances, created a network embracing the Obeysekere, Dias-Bandaranaike, Ilangakoon, de Alwis, de Livera, Pieris and Siriwardena families. This Anglican Christian network expanded further with the preponderance of native headmen as Mudaliyars, Korales and Vidanes from the community.

The powerful Mudaliyar class thus created by the British colonials, attempted to keep all other Sri Lankan communities out of colonial appointments. They also used all possible means to economically and socially marginalise and subjugate all other communities. The oppression by the Mudaliars and connected headmen extended to demanding subservience, service, appropriation of cultivation rights and even restrictions on the type of personal names that could be used by many other communities and castes.